The price and growth of vineyards in Spain

We’ve reached that point of the year where ESYRCE (the tip of the tongue acronym for “Encuesta sobre Superficies y Rendimientos Cultivos”) is releasing their official figures for 2014.

In brief, everything is more or less the same from 2013. The Canary Islands and Basque Country have the most expensive vineyard lands while Aragon and Madrid grew the most in terms of actual area. Castilla-La Mancha has the most amount of vineyards at 463,912 hectares which isn’t much of a surprise given that that denomination of origin is bigger than many of the Autonomous Regions of Spain. Alone, it holds nearly 49% of all the vineyards in Spain, the third largest producer of wine in the world.

Recognizing that irrigation is probably going to be an issue for the foreseeable future, 64% of all new vineyards were planted without any irrigation system, although this probably doesn’t take in account that many of the 36% that are irrigated will probably only be for the first three years. Whatever the rate, it’s a far cry from California which is in its third year of drought and is forcing growers there to irrigate less and surprise, surprise, have tastier wine.

But the biggest takeaway in all of this for the average citizen is that if you had your heart set on owning a picturesque little hectare of vines in Spain, the average price that will run you will be 12,553€. Seemingly pocket change when compared to Napa Valley which runs at about $125,000-741,000 per hectare. Oof.